Editor's Note

The Charge

"I'm dyin' here, you know? I'm dyin'."

Opening Statement

It is closing time Tuesday, August 22, at a Chase Manhattan Bank branch in
Brooklyn, a modest, modern structure sitting on a quiet corner at Avenue P and
East Third Street. Calvin Jones, a uniformed (and unarmed) bank guard, begins
locking the doors behind departing customers. Shirley Ball, a teller, starts her
final tally of the day's receipts. And bank manager Robert Barrett looks up from
a couple of loan applications to see a sandy-haired, baby-faced young man
nervously approaching his desk.

"Are you Mr. Barrett?"

"Yes."

"I'm Mr…" Barrett doesn't quite catch the name. The young
man sits down at his desk, however, and manages to pronounce his next couple
sentences a little more clearly.

"Freeze," says the visitor, whose name is Sal Naturile.
"This is a holdup. I'm not alone."

Behind the tellers' counter, Shirley Ball taps away at her adding
machine, engrossed in the figures on the tape. It takes a commotion from across
the room, the clear shout of an obscenity, to snap her attention. Who would use
language like that in a bank? Shirley Ball looks up and sees her boss at his
desk, a gun at his head, his hands in the air and a what-can-I-do? expression on
his face. Now she spots the second robber, John Wojtowicz, a dark, thin fellow
with the broken-faced good looks of an Al Pacino or a Dustin Hoffman, heading
into the tellers' area with an attaché case.

Wojtowicz begins filling the case with $37,951 in cash, $175,150 in
traveler's checks—not as much as he and his partner hoped for, but enough
of a modest winning to reverse two lifetimes of steady losing.

So began "The Boys in the Bank," a Life Magazine article
from September of 1972 written by Thomas Moore and P.F. Kluge. (The latter went
on to write, among other things, the novel Eddie and the Cruisers, which
was adapted into the film of the same name.) The subject matter—New York
City's first true hostage situation, a botched bank robbery by Wojtowicz and
Naturile that turned into a day-long standoff—had been the talk of the
town for the summer. For not only had the robbery gone south quickly due to the
sad ineptness of its perpetrators, but Wojtowicz was gay, and his male
"wife" had played a big role in the soap opera that played out that
day in Brooklyn. Wojtowicz, a former soldier who also had a first, female wife
and kids, went from desperate hothead to folk hero to arrested felon in the
space of a day. His hostages, in what has since been dubbed the "Stockholm
Syndrome," became his biggest boosters. Naturile, a pretty but angry and
sullen 18-year-old whose main crime was trusting Wojtowicz, wound up dead. As
per usual, NYC and its citizens got over it and moved on.

Ironically (given the description of Wojtowicz penned by Moore and Kluge),
the Life article was picked up by Hollywood and made into a film starring
none other than Al Pacino. The project reunited Pacino—at that point, one
of the hottest stars in Hollywood, thanks to his award-winning turn in the
Godfather films—with "actor's director" Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Fail-Safe, Network), who had recently directed him in
Serpico. With a hand-picked cast, including
veterans Charles Durning (Tootsie),
James "I'm Matt's Dad" Broderick (Family), and Pacino's acting
soulmate John Cazale (The Deer
Hunter), a taut, crisp script from Frank Pierson (Cat Ballou, The Anderson Tapes, A Star is Born), and an on-location New York
City shoot, the film was marked for greatness from the start.

And greatness it delivered. Dog Day Afternoon is one of the truly
great films of contemporary American cinematic history; a perfectly-acted,
perfectly-plotted pressure cooker of a film. But for its horrible timing, it
would likely be one of the most decorated films in Academy Awards history.
Instead, it had the misfortune to premiere in one of the richest years for
quality films in the past forty years—its competitors for Best Picture at
the 1976 Oscars were One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest, Jaws, Barry Lyndon, and Nashville. Instead of racks of Oscars,
it had to settle for a Best Original Screenplay statue, and the honor of just
being nominated (in five other major categories).

As part of its "Controversial Classics" series, Warner Bros. has
released a "Special Edition" of Dog Day Afternoon, superseding
a 1997 bare-bones DVD release of the film. Although the package as a whole is
underwhelming, the film itself overcomes any reasonable doubt as to a purchase.
If you're serious about film, you absolutely have to own this one.

Facts of the Case

It's a hot, lazy August day in Brooklyn. The rollicking blues of Elton John's
"Amoreena" (from Tumbleweed Connection, if you're curious) echo
from the AM radio of a car parked outside a small bank branch. Looking nervously
nonchalant, two men—whom we will soon know as Sonny (Pacino) and Sal
(Cazale)—enter the bank. Before long, Sal has pulled a gun on the branch
manager, and Sonny is spray-painting the security cameras. A robbery has
begun.

However, Sonny and Sal aren't the brightest criminals in the world.
Disorganized and rattled, they tarry too long in the bank, giving the police
time to respond. When an old-school police captain (Durning) arrives and demands
their surrender, Sonny and Sal are forced to change their plans. They take the
bank personnel hostage, demanding that the government provide them with a
helicopter and a fueled jet, which will fly them out of the country.

For the next twelve hours, a mini-drama plays itself out inside and outside
the bank. We learn the motive behind the bank robbery: Sonny needs money to pay
for his gay lover's sex change operation. Leon, the lover (Chris Sarandon, The Princess Bride), is one part
mincing queen, one part Queens housewife, and one part exasperated friend. His
main concern isn't Sonny's well-being; it's getting Sonny on the record as
saying that he, Leon, wasn't involved in the robbery. Sal is brooding and
frightening in his silence; when he does speak, he reveals himself to be very
unintelligent, but extremely complex. He's also clearly on a hair-trigger; he's
as menacing as Sonny is engaging. And Sonny is an engaging criminal—he's
almost desperate to please, even as he's threatening these people's lives.

Surprisingly, the NYPD is almost as inept at handling the situation as Sonny
and Sal. They fail to control the ever-increasing crowds of spectators gathering
around the scene—now being covered live by several New York radio and TV
stations, nor do they have any real plan on how to negotiate with Sonny. Hoping
that Leon can talk him out of the bank, they bring him to the scene. He promptly
faints, further adding to the multi-ring circus. Since a bank is involved, the
Feds technically have jurisdiction; before long, an FBI agent-in-charge
(Broderick) is on the scene, with a calm demeanor and a plan involving the
mysterious Agent Murphy (Lance Aliens Henriksen, in his first
major motion picture role). As the situation slowly builds to its violent
climax, we come to pity Sonny and Sal, two men who just didn't fit in. They are
criminals of the worst kind: ones who, deep down, aren't truly bad people.

The Evidence

There's just too much to say about this movie. I could sit here for hours and
type literally thousands of words about it. Do I discuss the beauty of seeing
Pacino at the absolute height of his powers, paired with a director who knew how
to pull every drop of talent out of him? Do I praise Lumet, one of the great
(and relatively unsung, compared to his peers) directors of recent times, and
place the film in its proper context as part of his unbelievable run of quality
in the '70s and early '80s (Serpico, this
film, Network, Murder on the Orient Express, Equus, Deathtrap, and The Verdict)? Do I highlight the
incredibly overlooked Chris Sarandon, who takes Leon—who could have
been just a "fag" caricature—and turns him into possibly the
first realistic and sympathetic openly gay character in cinema? I think he
was—I just haven't done the research to back up such an assertion. (Note,
too, that both Sarandon and Cuckoo's Brad Dourif gave outstanding,
Oscar-nominated supporting performances in their very first film roles, in
the very same year—but both lost out to a "let's give him one
before he croaks" award to George Burns for The Sunshine Boys. Stupid Oscars.) Should I
shout out crazee madd propz to Pierson's script, which is a textbook example of
how a strong, coherent structure (the entire film is built around twelve core
scene sequences) enhances and amplifies the dramatic heft of a story?

None of the above. I'm going to do something I've wanted to do for a long
time. I'm going to talk about John Cazale.

Cazale is, quite simply, the greatest supporting actor I've ever seen. Few
people know his name, but everyone knows him. They just know him as Fredo, the
black sheep of the Corleone family. Cazale made only five films in his too-brief
career, cut short by his death from bone cancer in 1978 at the age of 42. All of
them were nominated for Best Picture. Three of them won (the two
Godfather films and The Deer
Hunter); one (The
Conversation) was beaten by one of his three winners (The Godfather: Part II).

Cazale and Pacino had known each other since high school. They would, in the
space of three films, become possibly the greatest acting tandem of their era,
carving their performances deep into America's psyche. The kiss. The rowboat.
The window. You know exactly what I'm talking about—it's part of
our shared culture now. Had Cazale lived, there's no telling where these two
would have taken us. Pacino hasn't really been the same since John Cazale's
death; sometime around Cruising or Scarface, I think he stopped being
a frighteningly talented actor, and started just being Al Pacino. Today, with
very rare exceptions, he's almost a self-caricature.

But I digress. Cazale was brought into Dog Day Afternoon at Pacino's
request, despite the obvious fact that he wasn't exactly an 18-year-old. Lumet,
in his commentary, notes that he didn't even want to read Cazale, because he was
so obviously inappropriate for the Sal part. Pacino prevailed upon him to
reconsider, which he did. Lumet says that it took him about five minutes to hire
Cazale—his reading was that good. In real life, Sal Naturile was somewhat
of a cipher. He was violent, and apparently easily manipulated. But that's about
all anyone knew about him. Cazale turns his version of Sal into a deep and
complex character—and does so despite having virtually no lines to work
with.

There's one scene that perfectly summarizes Cazale's brilliance. Sonny has
convinced the cops to procure a jet for them; now they need to decide where
they're going to flee. Sonny asks Sal what country he wants to go to. Cazale
looks at Pacino with all his natural sadness etched on his face, plus a dash of
confusion, and says, quietly, "Wyoming."

That one word, combined with Cazale's delivery (which is impossible to
accurately describe in words), tells us almost everything we need to know about
Sal. Sal is, clearly, dumb. But he probably knows he's dumb, and it embarrasses
him. More importantly, Sal is very, very simple. He probably doesn't truly
understand what he's gotten himself into; he's just relying on Sonny to tell him
what to do. He is, in the truest sense of the word, pathetic. Although he still
scares us, we can't help but pity him.

One word. That's all it took John Cazale to turn Sal from a cipher into a
real, and pitiable, human being. I had already decided to mention this scene
when, while listening to Lumet's commentary, I learned that Cazale had
improvised that one word. Sal was supposed to be nonresponsive to Sonny's
questions. Instead, Cazale came up with "Wyoming." Pacino's response
is also improvised—and completely natural, because he was taken completely
by surprise. It really doesn't get much better than this.

I don't want to give short shrift to the other actors in this film. Pacino
is, as mentioned, at the absolute top of his form here. Sarandon is a
revelation. (Sadly, much like Dourif, he's never really equaled this, his first
performance, since—he's actually done more stage work than film work.)
Durning, Broderick, and the non-big-name supporting cast are all very good in
their roles. Everything feels very real and natural, true to Lumet's form.

Besides Lumet's commentary, which is informative and engaging, there's a
solid "30th Anniversary" documentary included, which covers all phases
of the movie's development and filming. It's a substantial documentary, although
it does rehash a lot of the factoids that Lumet mentions in the commentary. A
second featurette, a contemporaneous puff piece called "Lumet: Film
Maker," is less substantial, but vaguely interesting. The film's theatrical
trailer rounds out the extras.

The Rebuttal Witnesses

Warner Bros. has done nothing with this film. The transfer appears to be the
same anamorphic transfer from the 1997 disc—at least I hope it's
the same transfer, because I'd hate to think that a new transfer of a
not-terribly-ancient film would look this grainy and weak. It's not horrible,
mind you; but it looks like a '70s film. Really good digitally-cleaned-up
transfers of contemporaneous films—say, Jaws—look practically
new. This film should look the same, but it doesn't. It's also in a 1.85:1
aspect ratio, which (I believe) is cropped from the original theatrical
widescreen aspect. (But hey—at least it's anamorphic.) Color me
disappointed.

The sound is nothing to write home about, either—but it's hard to
criticize Warner Bros. for keeping the original mono soundtrack intact. There's
no real need to fancy up the sound with a faux surround mix or the like, to be
honest. The film is solid dialogue, save for "Amoreena" at the very
beginning. The track is clear, and gets the job done.

Closing Statement

There's only one way I can close here, and it's to say something I've never
said about a film before. I can think of no way in which Dog Day
Afternoon could be improved. There is no such thing as perfect in our
world…but this film is damn close.